With the iPad Camera Connection Kit, it's easy to download photos and videos from your digital camera to iPad for viewing and editing. Have no idea about the Camera Connection Kit? Check my another post for how to upload camera photos & footage to iPad.

Here let's talk about a relative but different thing: Does iPad support my camera?
Before you buy an iPad Camera Connection Kit, you’d better make sure it works with your camera. I can’t list all of iPad supported Cameras in this post (there’re too many cameras on the market), but here’re some useful tips for you to judge if your camera is compatible with the iPad device and its accessory CCK (camera connection kit).

1. Majority cameras take photo in JPEG and RAW format (e.g. ciff with Canon EOS), both are supported by iPad and CCK.

2. Compact Cameras shooting videos in .avi or .mp4 format are supported by iPad and the CCK. These include the Sony Cyber-shot Digital camera line, Panasonic Lumix series (only part of Lumix), and lots of other cameras (e.g. Flip). If you’re not sure if it’s a supported device, check the manual of the Camera - if it shoots in Motion-JPEG (i.e. M-JPEG) mode, then the footage can be imported to iPad naturally.

3. DSLR cameras shooting in .mov format are mostly supported. These include Canon EOS line, Nikon DLSRs and some others. Cameras may shoot video in different frame rate (23.976fps/29.987fps/59.94fps/60fps), but the iPad can’t play videos that are at above 30fps. For instance, Canon EOS 5D Mark III can shoot in both 640x480 30fps and 1280x720 60fps, and the latter is not supported thus can’t be imported.

4. AVCHD footage in .mts or .m2ts are not supported. This covers over-majority of the camcorders on market. Your photos on AVCHD camcorder can be uploaded all right. But the videos will not appear in available source area.

5. For some cameras/camcorders, videos shoot in SD mode (mostly .avi or .mp4) work with iPad while HD footage are not supported.

How do I know if iPad supports my camera footage?
Copy some footage from your camera/memory card to computer, and use MediaInfo to check the file information. This is a free tool and shows you video codec, frame rate, bitrate, resolution and other more information.



Supported Videos:
H.264 codec, .mp4/.mov format, <30fps
MPEG-4 codec, .mp4 format, <30fps
Motion-JPEG codec(MJPEG), .avi format

What if iPad does not support my camera footage?
In that case you'll need to copy the recordings to computer and encode the footage to iPad supported format (H.264 .mp4 recommended), and then sync the camera shootings to iPad via iTunes.
[How-to] Convert Camera video to iPad supported format

1. Drag and drop HD footage to Pavtube Video Converter.
2. Select "iPad>>iPad H.264 Video (*.mp4) format from drop-down list of Format bar.
3. Click the big Convert button.

[How-to] Copy Photos and Videos from Camera to iPad- Sync Camera with iPad